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Mansoor Ijaz Statement on General James Jones Affidavit
Mr. Mansoor Ijaz – a prominent Pakistani-American Wall Street financier and venture capitalist with business interests in New York, London and Zurich – issued his following statement about an Affidavit of US Marine Corps ex-General James Logan Jones, former US National Security Advisor, regarding a Pakistan Supreme Court case of the Zardari-Haqqani treasonous memo to US Navy ex-Admiral Michael Glenn Mullen, former Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff. – Journalist SYED ADEEB – Editor.
Mansoor Ijaz
By MANSOOR IJAZ
(AdeebMedia.com) – On December 12, 2011, Gen. James L. Jones issued an Affidavit to the Supreme Court of Pakistan in which he tried, to the best of his knowledge, information and belief, to recall the events of May 9, 10 and 11 of this year. These are the dates on which Amb. Husain Haqqani, Pakistan’s former ambassador to the United States, asked me to assist him in delivering a message that he dictated to me and whose content originated entirely from him to Admiral Mike Mullen, then Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff. Gen. Jones was the individual who I asked to deliver Haqqani’s message to the Admiral.
Gen. Jones and I have known each other since 2006. I consider him a friend and have learned many valuable lessons from him during the five years we have known each other. He has been a guest speaker at my charity events and I have been an overnight guest at his official home when he was NATO commander. We have published an op-ed together, ironically, in The Financial Times on the subject of Pakistan. Our families know each other, as do our spouses. He is a man of the highest possible integrity who has served the United States with unparalleled dignity and honor.
But in the case of his recollections with regard to this matter, I have a friendly disagreement with him on a number of the points he raises in his affidavit. It wouldn’t be the first time Jim did not recall something in our various interactions – on 13 November 2011, after Admiral Mike Mullen had denied the existence of the Memorandum on 8 November 2011, he wrote to me at 15:53:35 CET:
“Dear Mansoor,
When you decide to make an appearance you don’t half-step!
When Mike [Mullen] called me the other day to ask if I recalled anything about this, I told him that I did not recall anything coming to him from Zardari through any “back channel”. But after we finished talking, and having heard your name associated with the issue, I dug up the May 10 [2011] e-mails to refresh my memory and re-sent them to Mike…… [balance of personal message redacted]
Someday we should talk about the future of Pakistan. Your perspective would be interesting.
All the best, Jim“
Adm. Mullen retracted his denial about a week later. While I am not prepared to release publicly any other communications with Jim than those that were required by my statement to the Supreme Court, I felt it was important to point out that even the best of us have memory lapses from time to time.
On the November 30th broadcast of none other than “Charlie Rose”, perhaps the premier TV interviewer in television, Jim got his dates mixed up in one case and right in the other, showing just how easy it can be to forget or not recall accurately what was said or done at a prior point in time. When asked by Mr. Rose about who I was, Jim answered that he had met me in 2005 – in fact it was 2006 as he correctly points out in his affidavit. In that same interview, he made clear that this episode with the letter started, as he put it “…it was roughly the 9th or 10th of May…” That was accurate. What he states in his affidavit is not.
I set forth below a summary of the differences between the recollections of Gen. Jones and what my actual records reflect.
First, Gen. Jones states in Point 3 of his affidavit: “A few days before May 9, 2011, I received a phone call from Mr. Mansoor ljaz…” This is factually incorrect. The only telephone number I had for Jim at that time was his home number after he left the National Security Council. A thorough review this evening of my telephone records for the only two telephone numbers I maintain (a US cell and a UK cell) shows that on neither billing statement for that time period is there a single call to Jim’s home telephone number other than the one made on the morning of May 9th after Amb. Haqqani and I spoke – in fact just after we spoke. There are no calls at all to any number I have ever had for Jim in any single day in May prior to May 9th, and indeed, not on any date for that billing cycle going back to April 21, 2011 on either my ATT bill or my O2-UK bill.
The call made to Haqqani’s hotel in London was made at 12:35:49 and lasted 16:03. The Haqqani call would have therefore ended at 12:51:52. I called Jim at home at 12:58:06 CET (approx. 6 minutes after I hung up with Haqqani). That call lasted 02:25. The details of that call are contained in my statement entered at the Supreme Court of Pakistan. Jim returned my call from his new cell phone number at 13:54:31, lasting 19:26. The details of that call are contained in my statement entered at the Supreme Court of Pakistan.
I will make my full telephone records available to the investigators appointed by the Court at the appropriate time to examine and will instruct my service providers to send these records to the investigators directly.
Secondly, Jim states in Point 4 of his affidavit: “At no time during the call do I remember Mr. Ijaz mentioning Ambassador Haqqani, and he gave me no reason to believe that he was acting at the direction of Ambassador Haqqani, with his participation, or that Ambassador Haqqani had knowledge of the call or the contents of the message. I informed Mr. ljaz that I would not forward an oral message of this type to Admiral Mullen and that if he wanted anything forwarded it would have to be in writing.”
This statement is partially correct, and can be simply corrected completely by looking more closely at the timeline of discussion during that call. To the best of my recollection, at the outset of the call and for much of the call, I did not mention Haqqani’s name because I felt it was necessary to gauge Jim’s reaction to the message content first. In this way, if Jim simply said “No, I don’t want to do it,” there would have been no exposure of Haqqani’s plan. As his skepticism of the message content grew (we had some intense discussions about his Pakistan observations when he was National Security Adviser), he asked me who this was coming from and I said, exactly as Jim has stated in Point 6 of his affidavit, that it was from the highest authority in Pakistan. His skepticism persisted, and so to avoid any view from Jim about who I was sourcing this to, near the end of the call I made it clear to him that the message was originating from Haqqani. He asked me, as I recall and have stated in my Supreme Court testimony, about my relationship with Haqqani and I gave him a very short overview. He indicated his views of Haqqani, which he repeated to me in more strongly worded terms in a recent call after the controversy erupted, and then obliquely indicated that “highest authority” would need to be higher than Haqqani.
It is important to note that I never mentioned Gen. Jones’ name to Haqqani in any conversation or correspondence we had. Haqqani knew I was talking to more than one person, although it is my belief that he probably knew I would rely on Jim in the end. He certainly knew of my strong personal feelings for Jim, which I had conveyed in no uncertain terms when Haqqani took me to see President Zardari in Washington on May 5, 2009. President Zardari knew this as well. The second part of Jim’s statement is as I have stated previously and there is no disagreement on that point of oral vs. written.
Third, Jim erroneously notes that we had spoken a “day or two earlier” in Point 6. It was on that day for the first time in a very long time that we had spoken – I knew him well enough to call him at home at 7 AM, and would have only done so if the need was really that important and urgent as Haqqani made me believe it was.
Fourth, Jim notes that he assumed I wrote the memo since our conversation was reflected in it. Of course it was, and I was the technical typist of the Memorandum – I have never denied that point. But that doesn’t mean the content of the Memorandum arose from that conversation, and certainly no prior conversation had taken place between us on this subject. I say again, the content of the Memorandum to Adm. Mike Mullen originated entirely from Amb. Husain Haqqani. He dictated it to me and was responsible for all key edits, additions and subtractions, and asked me to insure it was sent to Adm. Mullen who was about to chair a meeting with certain Pakistani officials a few days later. It begs credulity to believe that I would have knowledge sufficient enough to know what Haqqani wanted me to write, and to know the schedules of the Pakistani President, Prime Minister, Chief of Army Staff and the chief military officer of the United States.
The balance of issues, all relatively minor, in the statement Jim has offered the Court will be addressed by an Affidavit I will file in the coming days. What is clear from this Affidavit is that Amb. Haqqani and his esteemed counsel have again determined that they will stop at nothing and will tarnish anyone by inducing statements from reputable people that could so clearly and definitively be rebutted by facts. Just as Adm. Mullen was forced to issue a retraction of his first denial, unfortunately in this case, Jim will have his recollection corrected by the facts.
The cover-up being orchestrated by Husain Haqqani continues and is impressive. His strategy to hide his lies under the skirts of important personalities and commission his friends to write untruths and half-lies about me in order to convince the Supreme Court of Pakistan that I am an unreliable witness will fail because the facts will prevail. Unfortunately, as Jim Jones himself said to me in an e-mail a few weeks ago when I apologized to him for getting him caught up in all this mess: “Telling the truth is always the best way to go…”
Even friendships that must be sacrificed for a short time cannot interfere with the course of justice and the search for truth.
MANSOOR IJAZ
Friday, 16 December 2011 – London, UK
Zardari-Haqqani Treasonous Memo Case
AFFIDAVIT OF JAMES LOGAN JONES
(AdeebMedia.com) – James Logan Jones, under penalty of perjury, hereby deposes and says that the following is true to the best of my knowledge, information and belief:
James Jones
1. I am the former United States National Security Advisor and a retired United States Marine Corps General. I was in private life at all times relevant to the matters discussed below.
2. I make this affidavit in response to a request from Pakistani counsel for former Pakistan Ambassador to the United States Husain Haqqani. It is my understanding that the affidavit may be used on his behalf with respect to an investigation currently under way in Pakistan.
3. A few days before May 9, 2011, I received a phone call from Mr. Mansoor Ijaz. I have known Mr. Ijaz in a personal capacity since 2006. During the call Mr. Ijaz mentioned that he had a [Zardari-Haqqani] message from the “highest authority” [PPP president Asif Ali Zardari] in the Pakistan government which he asked me to relay to then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Michael Mullen.
4. At no time during the call do I remember Mr. Ijaz mentioning Ambassador Haqqani, and he gave me no reason to believe that he was acting at the direction of Ambassador Haqqani, with his participation, or that Ambassador Haqqani had knowledge of the call or the contents of the [Zardari-Haqqani] message. I informed Mr. ljaz that I would not forward an oral message of this type to Admiral Mullen and that if he wanted anything forwarded it would have to be in writing.
5. On May 9th I received an email from Mr. Ijaz attaching an unsigned [Zardari-Haqqani treasonous] memo. The e-mail was sent to my personal e-mail address by Mr. Ijaz. The memo was not marked classified or restricted. It is my understanding that this memo is related to the ongoing investigation.
6. The substance of the [Zardari-Haqqani treasonous] memo was similar in nature to the phone call I had with Mr. Ijaz a day or two earlier. Mr. Ijaz again stated that the memo was authorized by the “highest authority” [PPP president Asif Ali Zardari] within the Pakistan govemment. Mr. Ijaz asked that I deliver the memo to Admiral Mullen.
7. It was my assumption that the [Zardari-Haqqani treasonous] memo was written by Mr. Ijaz, since the memo essentially put into writing the language he had used in our telephone conversation earlier.
8. I do not recall whether Mr. Ijaz claimed that Ambassador Haqqani had anything to do with the creation of the [Zardari-Haqqani treasonous] memo. I have no reason to believe that Ambassador Haqqani had any role in the creation of the memo, nor that he had any prior knowledge of the memo.
9. Upon my reading of the [Zardari-Haqqani treasonous] memo that I was asked to forward to Admiral Mullen, it struck me as highly unusual that the “highest authority” [PPP president Asif Ali Zardari] in the Pakistan government would use Mr. Ijaz, a private citizen and part-time journalist living in Europe, as a conduit for this communication. My personal opinion was that the memo was probably not credible.
10. As I was in the private sector, and not working for the U.S. government in any capacity at the time I received the [Zardari-Haqqani treasonous] memo, I felt obligated to forward it, as requested, to Admiral Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Admiral Mullen, in his official capacity was better able to make a judgment as to the memo’s credibility and determine any future course of action with regard to the memo.
11. Accordingly on May 10th [2011], I emailed the [Zardari-Haqqani treasonous] memo to Admiral Mullen. It is my understanding from Admiral Mullen’s public statement on the matter that he reviewed the memo, did not find it credible, and did not take any action.
JAMES LOGAN JONES
General, United States Marine Corps (Ret.)
Dated: December 12, 2011
Sworn to and subscribed before me this 12th day of December, 2011
Barbara Ann Murnane
Notary Public – Virginia, USA
[Mr. Syed Adeeb - www.SyedAdeeb.net - is America's investigative journalist, Chief Editor of the Information Press - (InformPress.com - AdeebMedia.com - AdeebPress.com) - Director of the Human Rights Justice Forum - HRJF.net - and Coordinator of the Journalists Scholars Forum (JSF) based in Virginia, USA. - Saturday, 17 December 2011]
References:
1. James Jones’ record, statement show he has memory problems
2. Mansoor Ijaz submits new affidavit in SC
3. Language of memo and Haqqani similar
4. US think-tank paid $100,000 to Haqqani to write book against army
5. Memo scandal: Mansoor Ijaz submits reply to SC
6. Replies Filed in Supreme Court – Constitution Petitions No. 77 to 85/2011
7. Zardari-Haqqani Treason Memo Case: Pakistan Supreme Court Order – 1 December 2011
8. Pakistan is stronger after ‘memogate’
9. An Insider Analysis of Pakistan’s ‘Memogate’
10. Who in the World is Mansoor Ijaz?
11. Time to take on Pakistan’s jihadist spies
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